The home at 39406 299th St. in rural Wagner is where authorities say the body of 2-year-old RieLee Lovell was recovered last week. / Elisha Page / Argus Leader

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RieLee Lovell was dead more than a day and a half before anyone called police, according to court documents filed Thursday in Charles Mix County.

The 2-year-old’s body was discovered by law enforcement on the afternoon of July 4.

Another child in the rural Wagner home asked two neighbor girls, ages 4 and 6, to come over and look at the body in a closet.

That was 9:30 p.m. July 3, more than 14 hours before 28-year-old Laurie Cournoyer called 911 to report an unresponsive child.

The court documents say Cournoyer and her husband Taylor Cournoyer, 21, spent the hours between Lovell’s death and the 911 call intoxicated on marijuana, methamphetamine and painkillers.

On July 4, neither of them could tell detectives when they’d last seen RieLee alive. The girl was a relative, but not a daughter, of the Cournoyers.

On Thursday, both of the Cournoyers were charged with cruelty or abuse of a minor and failure to report the death of a child in Charles Mix County, where they are being held on $500,000 warrants.

An 11-year-old boy is being held in the homicide, as well.

The Cournoyers are the first people in the state charged under the failure to report a death statute, which was passed this year to punish those who keep a child’s death concealed for six hours or longer.

An autopsy has been conducted, but no exact time of death has been established. The documents say the incident that took the child’s life probably occurred in the early morning hours of July 3.

'I saw her yesterday'

In a probable cause affidavit filed with the criminal case, Division of Criminal Investigation agent Riley Cook recalled this exchange with Taylor Cournoyer on July 4:

“I asked Taylor if it was possible (RieLee) had been deceased from the late night hours of 7-2-12 or early morning hours of 7-3-12,” Cook wrote. “Taylor responded with ‘I could have swore I saw her yesterday.’ ”

During several interviews with law enforcement, Taylor Cournoyer said he’d been working July 3. He returned home, then went to the Dollar General in Wagner to pick up cleaning supplies with Laurie before sitting in the bedroom to work on tattoo ideas.

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He told detectives that four of the six children in the home came into the bedroom and began coloring with him at one point, and that another child was “wandering around the house.” He said he thought he saw RieLee eating in the kitchen, but later said he couldn’t recall for certain.

He told detectives he’d smoked marijuana with Laurie Cournoyer that night, then shot fireworks with the kids until 3 a.m.

On July 4, he opened a closet door in the bedroom to look for something and saw RieLee’s body. He said he told Laurie, who told him to pick her up and put her in the bathroom. She called 911 shortly afterward, he said.

Other reports indicate that RieLee had been dead long before that. At 9:30 p.m. July 3, one of Laurie Cournoyer’s children, who is 6 years old, asked the neighbor girls whether they wanted to come over and “see my dead sister.”

The girls reported the incident to their mother, court papers say, and they later told a Charles County deputy they’d seen RieLee in the closet.

Taylor Cournoyer explained that it had been difficult to keep track of all the children. They didn’t feed the kids because food had been short, he said, so there hadn’t been a daily tracking of their whereabouts in the days leading up to RieLee’s death.

“When asked why no one had checked on (RieLee), Taylor provided that he was gone during the day of 7-3-12 and wanted to relax when he came home from work,” the court papers say. “Taylor stated that it’s sometimes stressful at home because the kids ‘are real a**holes.’ ”

Pills, pot, meth

Laurie Cournoyer was taken into custody on outstanding warrants before Cook arrived on the scene. When she spoke with detectives after 5 p.m. July 4, she initially said that RieLee and another child were fighting as she tried to clean the house at 11:30 that morning.

She’d sent them into the bedroom as a punishment, she said. When she came in to get the toddler for a bath, she said, the girl was unresponsive. She tried to revive her, she said, then called 911.

She also said she’d taken seven prescription pills for her insomnia that morning.

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After further questioning, Laurie Cournoyer said she could not recall with certainty when she’d last seen RieLee, either. She said she’d seen the child alive upon her return from the Dollar Store with Taylor Cournoyer on July 3 but couldn’t provide a time. She also admitted to taking three of the sleeping pills July 2 and seven pills July 3 before smoking marijuana with Taylor.

“Laurie consistently had a difficult time providing detailed information regarding dates and times,” the paperwork said.

After the initial interview, DCI agents served a search warrant on the home and found a prescription pill bottle with no label, a marijuana pipe and two hypodermic needles, which detectives said could have been used for insulin.

Laurie Cournoyer was interviewed a second time after the search warrant was served, court papers say, and she admitted to using more pills than she’d been prescribed, to smoking marijuana and to using methamphetamine with her husband July 3.

Next court date

The Cournoyers are being held on $500,000 cash bond until their next court appearance, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Charles Mix County Courthouse.

For Eileen Fox, RieLee’s mother, the news of felony charges is welcome. Fox said she still is in shock over her daughter’s death.

“I want them all in jail for a really, really long time,” Fox said.

Information on juvenile criminal proceedings are closed under South Dakota law, meaning the details of RieLee’s death will not come to light unless the boy is charged as an adult.

The remaining children in the home where RieLee was found are in protective custody.